Six the Musical - Arts / Lyric / Vaudeville

This is GREAT. It’s lovely, isn’t it, when a show from humble beginnings ends up a sensation, on the simple grounds of being really bloody good? The only other example I can think is The Play That Goes Wrong, the global takeover of which from its pub theatre beginnings is just heart warming (they deserve it, obvs).

Finally seeing this, I was bowled over. This ‘concert’ set-up sneakily looks populist, crowd-pleasing, singalong – and boy is it – but its trick of twisting the knife (both in individual songs, and overall over the 75 minutes), its sly comments on sexism, and slyer ability to get us onside before implicating us in its societal critique too, is just so powerful. Musically it shamelessly rewrites the great 90s songbook, but the authors know that accessible does not mean lowest-common-denominator; with these two precise and pointed and seemingly unrelated moments of society (Tudor gender roles and pop gender roles) they’ve written a show which you want to sing along to, but feel challenged for singing along to. It’s bonkers, but bizarrely insightful. The brilliant things the show does with dramaturgical historiography and sexist reappraisals of history are never dumbed down through those fantastic hits – instead context elevates music and vice versa. Oh, and to begin with, the songs are just really, really, really, really good.

The 75 minute run time, and the simplicity of the set-up, didn’t bother me. I don’t think there’s anything the show wants or needs to say that it doesn’t do, often via implication, in that time (the only issue there comes in pricing, and hey, that’s less an issue of theatre and more an issue of economics). In fact I think it’s far punchier for its brevity. Maybe some EXACT historical content is lost, but it’s not Wolf Hall The Musical; given the point the show is saying through modern music, who cares?

I should make no bones about this. I’m exactly of the generation who grew up with this music. The sheer, classy attention to detail bought to every song is just spot-on, poppy but never pandering. What’s extra brilliant is the level of self-awareness that’s been brought to otherwise genre constructs (Britney sexy pop, Eurotrash, Lily Allen-y self-confidence) that makes it a bit of a nostalgia trip, but a re-evaluative one, which asks anyone who grew up with naff pop music to re-evaluate that world too – most effectively in All You Wanna Do, which begins as such a perfect recreation of that sexy Britney style and really, really, really builds up beautiful discomfort until its unbearable end – unbearable for both the character, and those of us invested in this music, this world. Cabaret, Kander and Ebb, would do that too, and I think that comparison isn’t unjustified.  Depressingly, the show argues that certain sexist constructs – the virgin/whore motif, promiscuity equalling evil – never go away whatever society we have, but are simply being rewritten centuries apart, and amazingly this parallel absolutely holds up.

Being so specific, will this still hold up in ten, twenty, fifty years? Yes – because the dramaturgical construction is just that damn good. People much older in the audience (like, in their late 20s old!) were having a whale of a time. It doesn’t, however, either get bogged down pretending to be a history lesson, nor overindulge 90s kids with their musical nostalgia. It’s not dissimilar to Nell Gwynn in that way – strip the amazing fun away, and that’s an astute point, put in a perfectly entertaining context, that matters, and shakes you up.

I could not have enjoyed this show more. Watching it I had an absolute blast. The knife-turning that comes as the songs open up their characters is haunting – when I sing along with All You Wanna Do (which I do a lot) I never know if I’m doing so joyfully or guiltily. The self-aware script is as adventurous as anything I’ve seen in ages. The criticisms it has of lazy gender constructs are hard to shake. And the music! Five stars no question. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen in yonks, but it’s also the one that’s made me the most excited too.